A new UCLA study has found that young adults who have experienced discrimination have a higher risk for both short and long-term behavioural and mental health problems.
The findings of the study were published in the journal ‘Pediatrics’. Researchers examined a decade’s worth of health data on 1,834 Americans who were between 18 and 28 years old when the study began. They found that the effects of discrimination may be cumulative — that the greater number of incidents of discrimination someone experiences, the more their risk for mental and behavioural problems increases.
The study also suggested that the effects of discrimination in young adults are connected with disparities in care for mental health concerns and institutional discrimination in health care overall, including inequities in diagnoses, treatment and health outcomes.
Previous studies have linked discrimination — whether due to racism, sexism, ageism, physical appearance or other biases — to a higher risk for mental illness, psychological distress and drug use. While previous research has examined the correlation in childhood or later adulthood, this new study is the first to focus on the transition to adulthood and to follow the same group of individuals over time.
“With 75 per cent of all lifetime mental health disorders presenting by age 24, the transition to adulthood is a crucial time to prevent mental and behavioural health problems,” said Yvonne Lei, a medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s corresponding author.
Lei also said the findings are particularly relevant in light of the stresses young adults are facing nationwide today.
Researchers used data spanning 2007 to 2017 from the University of Michigan’s Transition to Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey. Approximately 93 per cent of the people in the study reported experiencing discrimination; the most common factors they cited were age (26 per cent), physical appearance (19 per cent), sex (14 per cent) and race (13 per cent).